Love of Mankind Submitted by Jan Polak Talent Dynamics Master Trainer

Why we were asked to work with Love of Mankind Submitted by Jan Polak Talent Dynamics Master Trainer

Love of Mankind is a bold initiative with a vision to make the world a better place and help young people to create a better future. The four young founders of the project, studying at London’s George Monoux College, were inspired by the concept of philanthropy (which translates to ‘love of man’).

They decided to put their own spin on good causes where it mattered – in their impoverished, high-crime neighbourhood in East London. ‘Love of Mankind’ began with private tutoring sessions in which A-level college students tutored underachieving primary school kids.

The initiative later broadened to include community projects such as ‘Challenge Excellence’, a business apprentice programme, and co-ordinating volunteering opportunities and skill development events in the Waltham Forest area.

Growing their team and integrating new volunteers into the project to make it sustainable and scalable was something they wanted Jan to help them with.

What we did

The Love of Mankind team completed our one day programme - Introduction to Talent Dynamics.

Jan designed and delivered a modified version of the one-day Talent Dynamics Step One programme for this young team. The concept of Talent Dynamics and its organisational application was a new language for the team who had little, if any, business experience. Even the idea of spending a whole day in a workshop was novel to them. But they embraced the opportunity and quickly grasped the essence of Jan’s guidance.

The idea of using their natural talents to energise flow within their team, resonated with everyone. The founders assimilated the complementarity of their Talent Dynamics profiles for the project and how everyone was valuable because of the different value each contributed.

On this programme, individuals in the team received their personal Talent Dynamics Profile Reports and began to understand the best way to create value within their team and how to leverage that value with each other. They started to have some real ‘aha’ moments about why the ideas they previously had were not coming to fruition in the way they had set out previously.

They experienced a unique process of creating flow using the Talent Dynamics model and learnt how to immediately apply that to the ideas created that day. The programme created situations that allowed participants - both as individuals and as a team - to experience for the first time together, flow, in a very empowering way.

Whom we worked with in the Enterprise

The Love of Mankind Leadership Team

Programme timings

A one day programme was run in November 2011

How the programme has impacted

The idea of using their natural talents to energise flow within their team, resonated with everyone. The founders assimilated the complementarity of their Talent Dynamics profiles for the project and how everyone was valuable because of the different value each contributed.

With these concepts under their collective belt, there was an immediate shift in the team’s thinking – about what was possible, and how to go about achieving it.

They set up “A walk to raise awareness for gun and knife danger on the streets” that aimed to draw thousands of young people to demonstrate against violence. They drew up a template of how to collaborate as a team and build partnerships

The team has now grown to seven members, they have a common purpose, individuals work independently with clear accountabilities and regularly come together as a team to share ideas. Their mentor Jose says that “Love of Mankind is now regarded as a centre of social entrepreneur development in the college and community”

After a few months the project co-founder Saima Khalid told Jan, ‘We are continuously exploring new ideas. What we are doing now is just the beginning.’

They are now working on broadening their Little Stars project, a one-day mentoring programme for primary school kids, developing the project into a Social Enterprise or Community Interest Company, and partnering with local charities to engage students, a working model with the ability to replicate and scale across the UK.

Now, because the team is so strong, the collaboration occurs without an apparent central person driving it...”